The Blogger review

In the fourth article of this ongoing analysis I looked at the performance of calls made by individual Bloggers who form part of the TickerSense Blogger Sentiment Poll.

As in prior analysis, a successful bullish call was considered to be a gain greater than 1%, a bearish call a loss of 1% and a neutral call fell between +1 and -1%. S&P returns were assessed on Monday's open price and a close 30-days later.

The test period ran from April 14th to September 15th 2008 and was made up of 27 bloggers. The S&P had seven bullish periods, one neutral period and fourteen bearish periods over this time frame. The poll is usually run every week, but for three weeks in this period no poll was run.

The calls were ranked from most accurate to least accurate:


Crossing WallStreet, Information Arbitrage, Ahead of the Ticker, Controlled Greed, Infectious Greed, and In the Money had fewer than five returns so their results were more prone to extremes. The Bull / Bear column reflects the Blogger's net stance based on their individual returns; a blogger making all bear calls would score -100% and all bull calls a +100%, with everybody else falling in between.

Given the strong bearish bias in the market the bearish bloggers returned the highest prediction scores - a self-fulfilling policy. However, bearish bloggers did not get the run of the park; Jack Stevison and Daily Dose of Optimism were the most nimble in their calls, returning high accuracy but weren't strongly bearish. For Daily Dose of Optimism it was a return to form after a sharp drop in the last review. The following table shows the average percentage of correct calls for each review period:


Daily Dose of Optimism ranked number one of participants across all four polling periods. Random Roger was next in the rankings with a very strong performance over the past two scoring periods. Interestingly, as noted by the Birinyi team, Random Roger returned a bullish call for the current Ticker Sense poll (Oct 13-17) - his first bullish call since the poll began in December 2006. It will be interesting to see how timely it is. My market calls (personal opinion not the views of Zignals.com) had the greatest consistency with the lowest variance of the top-3 Bloggers from the poll with 24/7 WallStreet not far behind.

Of the recent inductees, Crowder Blog, Traders-Talk and Jack Stevison have all scored well with accuracy averages over the past two periods of 72%, 53% and 59% respectively and are bloggers to watch over the coming months.

How have blogger perceptions of the market changed over time?


In crude terms, the S&P since December 2006 has enjoyed one bullish period, one bearish period and two relatively neutral periods.

On the Blogger side there was a gradual bearish drift for Daily Dose of Optimism. A sharp change in opinion from bullish to bearish was found for Elliot Wave Lives On and Information Arbitrage. Millionaire Now and Learning Curve polled in the other direction with a shift from bearish to bullish, with a more gradual move from neutral to bullish for Quant Investor. Consistently bullish were Carl Futia and the Shark Report. Consistently bearish were Random Roger and 24/7 WallStreet.

Based on absolute S&P performance since December 2006 to mid-September 2008 the market had more or less come full circle. Since then bears have hammered their advantage home, but it won't always be so. Has Random Roger made a prudent change of heart?

Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts, and stock charts website
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Building Blog relationships

In Problogger's latest post he discussed the 12 Tools and Techniques for Building Relationships with Other Bloggers. Relationships are important as blogging by its nature, tends to be a solo endeavour. Darren gave five reasons why building such relationships are good for you:

[1] Finding readers
[2] Learning your Craft
[3] Accountability and Advice
[4] Friendship
[5] Sharing of Skills

How do his 12 tips apply in financial blogging?

[i] Blog Commenting: Commenting is perhaps the easiest and quickest way to get noticed. The biggest mistake in commenting is to write off-topic; it's important to know the audience, for example, singing the virtues of technical analysis to a blogger who hates it is not going to get you on his or her Christmas card list. By conversing with those bloggers considered important to you, you quickly build up a rapport without the need for lengthy emails (which often get filtered as spam, not to mention are more time consuming to write) with the benefit of a linkback for those who share your opinions to go to your blog.

[ii] Emailing Other Bloggers: Requires more effort than a targeted comment on a particular post since you will need to engage the blogger based on their blog content as a whole. Easiest way is to offer your opinion on a topic or stock which may have featured in a past article (versus a more recent article where a comment may suffice) and ask for the blogger's opinion or comment. Emails should have a bit of beef to them, around two or three short paragraphs - but not too much that it looks like your relative died and you need to shift $10 billion. You want to attract the reader's eye, but don't want your email to look spammy

[iii] Guest Posts: Darren makes an excellent point on watching for times when Bloggers go on vacation and offer to guest post then. Best way to audition is to write a piece which carries the tone of the blog you wish to guest on; 250-500 words is plenty. You will probably earn a link-back to your site in the process.

[iv] Story tips: A great one for financial bloggers. Again, be frugal in your messaging and don't push something to a blogger 'cold' (i.e. at least build up an initial introduction first). Get a twitter account and start following the networks of interest to you and your readers; when something comes up which may be relevant to another blogger you can notify them with a quick email or tweet.

[v] Link out: Recommended reading lists are a great style of post when writer's block sets in. You also benefit by creating informational channels from your blog to the blogs you are trying to reach out to; they will see this information in their referral analytics. Because of this I would always follow your blog links to your favorite blogs where possible, particularly in the early days; a feed-hit - although more convenient - isn't going to register your link to the target blogger. If you are checking their site on a daily basis, those 30-31 referral hits a month will get noticed. From there it will be down to the quality of your content to get a recripriocal link in place.

[vi] Instant Messaging: More the realm of the day trader when the fast flow of information is critical. Not so important for financial bloggers where Twitter is the norm for soundbite sharing. As a non-IM user I would have to admit it wouldn't be something I would be keen to go for.

[vii] Social Networking: Take your pick. Facebook has a number of financial-related groups and you can link your blog RSS feed to your Facebook profile - providing easy access to your blog. A good way of building an initial readership is to actively participate in Facebook financial (and non-financial) groups; targeting potential readers with shared interests.

[viii] Social Bookmarking: A hit-or-miss strategy for financial bloggers. But Darren's recommendation is not to social bookmark your own articles, but to Digg, Stumble Upon, or Del.icio.us articles of bloggers you are looking to build relationships with. Social Bookmarking is like digging for oil; you can dig many wells and get nought, but once you hit the big one you better be ready for the traffic which follows.

[ix] Interviews: If you have something worth saying then consider getting in touch with TraderInterviews. Better still, if there is a blogger you would like to hear about then suggest TraderInterview talks to them! Financial bloggers occassional run spot interviews on traders. Stocktickr also maintaina a good archive of interviews, especially ones featuring financial bloggers.

[x] Forums and Discussion Groups: Not as simple as it may sound. When building readership through this channel you need to offer valuable content, but not so much that the content of your blog isn't worth the trip. Writing for a Forum and Twitter is similiar in this respect. If you are a sector specialist then forums are a great way of archiving your more in depth analysis, with the sound-bite commentary kept for the forum. Word of warning: message boards, like Yahoo!s, can quickly filter out your blog link, so always ensure your profile has a link back to your blog, and avoid overusing your blog link on every post. Also prepare for Trolls and (unwarranted) flamings.

[xi] Pick up the Phone/Skype it: As Darren suggests, best done when a well established relationship is already in place.

[xii] Real Life Networking Events: Sometimes bloggers announce which events they are going to attend. If you are in the neighbourhood it can be a great way to build up a rapport faster than a stream of emails or IM would. Again, Facebook might also help when it comes to organising or arranging social events with members of your group.

As a final note, and to repeat Darren's advice, there is a fine line between overbearing attempts at communication (spam) and friendly discourse. The best way to start is to build up the link love from your blog to theirs, move on to commenting and social networking, and when one of your articles makes it to their page fire off a 'Thank You' email and brief introduction about yourself. Buying them a gift from their Amazon wish-list is always a good cheap way of building goodwill.

Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts, and stock charts website
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Blog traffic and market reversals?

Greater reference has been made in recent times to the association between blog readership and market reversals, not just from Barry's TheBigPicture from this past February and March, but also in the spikes in volume for TraderMike, Traderfeed, and my personal blog.

So for this paper napkin research I did some analysis of my personal blog web traffic. I converted my visitors number using the same calculation as used for on-balance-volume; termed on-balance-visits. When the S&P closed higher I added my blog readership to a cumulative total, when it closed lower I subtracted it. Overall, I experienced strong readership growth; moving from around 400 visits a day in October 2007 to the 700 currently:


By using an on-balance-visit calculation I can sidestep some of the concerns which may effect other metric calculations when trying to account for general readership growth. The key distortion when using on-balance-visit is a megaphone style chart with larger extremes as heavier (overall) traffic is added and subtracted to the cumulative total. This could be overcome by overlaying a moving average trigger as is done for on-balance-volume, or support/resistance lines connecting peak highs and lows (assuming constant growth in site traffic). I did neither here but it may be considered at a later date.

Like on-balance-volume, depending on when you start will dictate your zero line, so I started from the beginning of October just before the 1,576 top in the S&P. The initial relationship is given in the chart below; the green line represents on-balance-visits, the black line the S&P:


What is clear is peaks in on-balance-visits mark important market reversals; not just for bottoms but tops too.

In terms of spike lows, March 27th 2008 and November 16th 2007 were important on-balance-visits bottoms; each falling below the -3,000 mark. The S&P was at 1,325 in March and 1,459 in November. The spike high of 1,371 in my core visitor numbers actually occurred the day after the March 27th on-balance-visit low.

With respect to tops, complacency sets in on breaks above +1,000. The first break of 1,000 came on December 27th, then February 22nd and more recently on May 14th. The S&P finished at 1,476, 1,353 and 1,409 across each of those dates.

However, the current rally in the S&P has seen another surge in traffic to take on-balance-visits past the +3,000 mark. The prior two peak tops in on-balance-visits in December and February were quickly punished with declines of 11% and 6% respectively inside a few weeks. So what will the next couple of weeks hold for the S&P?

Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts, and stock charts website
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Financial Blogging - Part III: Publicize

You have your article composed and out in the 'public domain', but where do I get my readers from? When your blog is floating amongst a sea of blogs it can be hard to get it noticed. However, there are ways you can bring it to the attention of readers. I did a brief piece this time last year on starting a blog.

[1] One of the easiest ways to get things going is to submit an article to one of the many Blog Carnivals out there. These cover areas of stocks, investing and personal finance. Blogcarnival.com is a good one stop-shop for all that is out there. The best articles for Carnivals are timeless; look more at the big picture and less at the 1-minute activity of a stock.

[2] Get personal. Join Feedburner as a start. Then link your feed to your Facebook account, LinkedIn, or whatever social bookmark tool you use. Sign up for MyBlogLogs, add your blog to your email signature (Feedburner have a great little widget which can be added to your signature which cycles through the title lines for the past 5 posts). Whenever you comment on another blog, ensure there is a backlink to your blog.

[3] Submit your blog to the various blog directories. Sites like Blogcatalog.com, Blogtoplist, and Blogtoplists are generalists, while WallStreetSignal and PhatInvestor are stock specific. Personally, I don't find the former great for foot traffic, but it can give you an idea as to where you stand in the broader picture. Instantbull.com has a good list of blogs and is an excellent starting point when building your feedread list, but also send a request to get yout blog added.

[4] Get Analytical. Google Analytics is the obvious choice, but don't forget sites like Spotplex, Sitemeter, and Activemeter. MyBlogLog has a similar referral link tracker. It's not only important to know how much traffic your blog is getting, but where it is coming from. Perhaps your getting a reference link from another blog. This is a good opportunity to send a 'Thank You' intro-email for the foot traffic and help build your contact list. Knowing who is interested in what you do makes it easier to publicize yourself without having to resort to broad spamming of bloggers to get attention. Should your write a follow up article on the linked piece you can notify interested parties (through email, or a comment on their blog) that new information is available which may be of interest to their readers. If you blog is U.S. focused then adding Quantcast can provide some handy demographic data.

[5] Make it easy for readers to social bookmark your site. Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia and StumbleUpon are some of the primary players. A Digg link can help too. A note of caution, it is rare to see financial articles on the front page of these sites; whether that has to do with the nature of financial blog readers (who tend to be older and likely less inclined to social boookmark), the smaller readership compared to other sector blogs, or the content itself - is debatable.

[6] Get connected. Build up a feed list of your favorite bloggers and start commenting on those blogs you like. For example, you can use Google Reader, Netvibes or Bloglines. Comments need only be brief (though relevant). Ensure your name has a linkback to your blog. Don't spam the comments with unnecessary links to your blog; remember you are contributing content and added value to the other blogger for the purpose of building up a rapport - not using their comment board as a billboard for yourself. By all means include links to your blog which supports or adds value to the article you are commenting on, but don't overuse the facility.

[7] This may sound silly, but download the Alexa toolbar ('Sparky'). Why? For a reason I cannot explain, my blog only ranked on Alexa when I had a toolbar on my computer. Alexa only measures blog traffic from users with the toolbar, so if you at least have the toolbar then your blog will be given a ranking. Because of this oddity, my Alexa ranking of 400K appears entirely attributed to the number of visits I make to my site from the three computers I use which have the toolbar. Stupid? Yes. Worth ignoring? Probably not. Why? Sites like Instantbull.com use Alexa to rank you blog. Having an Alexa ranking might make the difference between a top-25 blog and a top-100 blog.

Resources:
9 ways to make your blog more inclusive
54 ways to get traffic to your blog
12 Ways to be a more interactive and accessible blogger
How to be a ruthless blogger
How to blog successfully - 70 reader blogging tips.
7 Types of blog posts which always seem to get links and traffic
101 Blog tips I learned in 2006
Top 25 blogs about blogging
7 Ways to promote your site with a bit of money

Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts, and stock charts website
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Financial Blogging - Part II: Writing

Knowing what to write about can sometimes be a challenge so keeping a mental or written plan can help provide structure for your blog. The following questions should be answered with your own blog in mind.

How Frequent Should Postings Be?

Consistency in posting is more important than absolute number of posts. No point doing three one day and none for the rest of the week. Never post less than one a week, you want to keep your brand front and center; if the quality of your (infrequent) posts is good you will only frustrate your readership as you leave them wanting more; if those handful of posts are poor, then your readers will never be back.

It's best to start with five posts a week, doing one a day. The timing of your posts should be done to maximize your potential audience. For financial blogging this usually means a post summarizing the days action after the market closes, but before the next day's open. Traders frequently conduct their research in the evening, so having your post available for them will help attract readers and keep them loyal. Try and keep a regular posting schedule so readers know when to expect a post.

Bloggers commenting on the latest news as it breaks need to be more involved in keeping track of information and getting out their opinion as soon as it is feasible. This is not something a beginner should try because of the dedication required to keep on top of what is going on. In such blogs the aim is for frequent, short commentary pieces.

The logical posting schedule is Monday to Friday, but as the data below suggests, Sunday night is prime-time for financial blogs while Friday is a bit of a dead-zone. Schedule your first post to be available for the weekend, but take Friday off.



The timing of your posts should coincide with the market you are following; blogs concentrating on U.S. markets will likely see heavy readership between 9am and 10am and later in the evening between 9pm and midnight. A lunchtime peak at midday will grab some attention. The same patterns are likely across other markets, so if you are in one part of the world writing on a market in another, make sure the timing of your posts suit your target demographic, not the region your in.

How Long Should A Blog Post Be?

A matter of preference and dependent on the subject. As the expression goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words" holds very true for financial blogging. An annotated chart of a stock, or market, provides context and avoids the bland descriptive 'market z went up x%'.

Problogger suggests your reader should be able to cover the content of your post inside 1m 30secs (looks like this post will violate that rule!). A daily post with about 200-250 words should be sufficient for most topics. Individual stocks may require more depending on the depth of analysis; however, longer articles should be broken up with tables and figures where possible which will help improve flow and reduce the length of the post (e.g. a stock's earnings with respect to its competitors would make a good chart).

What Can I Write About?

A simple plan provides focus and can be a useful starting point for ideas. HeadlineCharts is a good example of a structured blog; on Monday he discusses sector strength, on Tuesday its interest rates and the U.S. dollar, and so on through the week - but the topic of the day is the same depending on what day of the week it is. Graham Jones details a blogging plan, but a financial blogger's might look something like this:

Monday: Review of what I read (one line comments with link to articles)
Tuesday: Stock of the day
Wednesday: Portfolio update
Thursday: Stock of the day
Friday: No post
Saturday: Review of last weeks market action + expectations for next week (could be two separate posts)

Within the context of the plan, the blog could be personalized with book reviews, music interests, movie reviews, sports commentary, or whatever strikes your fancy. Although I would limit this to less than 20% of the total blog's content. It is important your blog has a marketable theme to attract regular readers.

How Do I Separate Myself From The Herd?

Personal Opinion. In the field of financial blogging everyone has the same information, the same news, and the same stocks making new 52-week highs and lows. It's important your blog provides your spin on what's happened and looks for the angle others may have missed. Following a less watched market gives you greater flexibility in this regard, but comes with a smaller audience to target.

To start with you will probably try and comment on as much as possible, but over time you will notice patterns in your foot traffic as certain topics gain greater popularity over others (Google Analytics can tell you the main search phrases for traffic to your blog and which articles attracted the most traffic). With this information you can focus on those areas which attracted readers and less on those which did not.

I'm Stuck For An Idea, Help!

If in doubt, write a post about what another blogger, or other bloggers, wrote. Blending ideas into a single piece will help stimulate conversation as trackbacks attract readers (and the blogs author's) to your site. Just be careful not to rip articles word for word. It's your ideas readers are interested in, not those of another blogger - they'll get them at the true source.

What Should I Watch For?

Bad spelling! One or two slip-ups are tolerable, overall bad spelling is not - use that spellchecker.

Resources:
All round good advice: ProBlogger
Marketing your blog: CopyBlogger
Early post on 'How to Write a Better Weblog': A List Apart
Seth Godin keeps it succint.
DearJohnThain wrote an excellent post directly relevant to financial blogging

Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts, and stock charts website
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Financial Blogging - Part I: Content

In a series of articles (how many I have yet to decide!) I will look into some of the does and don'ts of financial blogging.

The first challenge is to select a topic, or core area of interest to you. Ideally, this should be a subject in which you have a good degree of background knowledge, and is best approached from what is familiar. What do I mean by this?

For many this means U.S. markets, but coverage of the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq is saturated with financial blogs with A-listers in those fields well established. Therefore trying to push a new blog into this area is a challenge. If your area of expertise lies in U.S. markets the best tactic is to specialize. Sites like Footnoted.org, 10QDetective are prominent in the field of company report analysis. Dr. Brett Steenbarger at TraderFeed authors the number 1 blog on Trading Psychology. Howard Lindzon brought financial vlogging to the fore with WallStrip. While Brian Shannon at AlphaTrends has the number 1 financial vid-cast on YouTube.

How can their success be measured?

Studies of webtraffic is the obvious way, but checking the blogrolls of A-listers like Barry Ritzholtz. WallStreetFighter, and TraderMike will give a better picture as to what appeals, what works and more importantly, what's absent. You will notice many of the aforementioned sites on their blogrolls (and quite a few not listed here). Blogs with broad appeal will get mentions in main stream media outlets like WSJ (and here), or Forbes.

What about me, how can I find a topic?

First port of call should be to check what's out there. Start with a few top bloggers and follow their links. What's missing? Why are those blogs there? It will be readily apparent coverage of the main indices is well established, but there is still room for sector specialists (e.g. semiconductors). But for these to be successful it may be necessary to take the best ideas of the leading bloggers and combine them into a single entity. So taking a semiconductor blog as an example. Your blog may have a vlogging or podcast component; an end-of-week review of sector performance with respect to the broader indices; featured analysis of component stocks with fundamental and technical analysis;

What should I write about?

Sometimes the answer is not as obvious as you may think. Charles Kirk published an excellent piece on a survey he did of his members. He made two excellent (and apparently conflicting) statements:

"> The top five favorite members' only offerings are: stock screen machine, after hours posts, premarket posts, Q&A ask me anything, and stock filters#

> The top 5 least favorite members' only offerings are: guess this stock, extras (golf, family, trips, etc.), retirement investing posts, book reviews, and the model retirement portfolio"

Readers were not invested in individual stocks per se, but were interested in lists of potential stock candidates which fit predefined criteria (the 'stock screen'). This makes sense; nobody wants to pile into a single stock at the same time as other readers, but when there is a choice of stocks there is a reduced risk from reader rush into a single stock, so readers may be willing to pay more attention to those stocks (Stockbee's blog is a good example of this style of stockpicking).


Okay. This is all well and good if you are looking at U.S. markets, but what about other markets?

Luckily, this is where the void begins. Primary coverage of European, Asian, and Latin-American markets is relatively low with little (if any) of the specialist coverage now found in U.S. markets. I did a quick and dirty search on Technorati for blog coverage on some of the main markets. The results in the table give the number of Technorati hits for each of the listed terms. Coverage of U.S. markets is over 10 times that of its nearest rival, the U.K. FTSE. This lack of coverage means opportunity for bloggers looking to establish their credentials. As blog coverage (and audiences) of non-U.S. markets rise, opportunities for diversification as evolved in U.S. market blogs will present themselves.

Is it too late to start?

No! It's never too late if you get your planning right. Timothy Sykes took his blog from 'nowhere' to A-list status in less than a year. He hit his 1 millionth visitor after 6 months. Contributing to his success was giving financial bloggers a free copy of his book, combined with an in-your-face approach to blogging which broke from the staid formula common in financial writing. His Alexa ranking speaks for itself:



Declan Fallon is contributing to the development of stock alerts, stock charts, and trading strategies for Zignals
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How Accurate are Bloggers III

In my first article for the new Zignals blog I will follow up on two earlier pieces I wrote in May 2007 and September 2007 on the TickerSense Blogger poll. The TickerSense Blogger Sentiment Poll has had its fair share of criticism in the past, but it is still the best, single source gauge of blogger opinions on the market. It's somewhat unfortunate to see participation drop to about 20 bloggers, but it does at least capture some of the bullish to bearish opinion out in the blogosphere.

The Poll is based on a 30-day outlook for the S&P; bullish, bearish, or neutral. I assume a 'neutral' call to be less than a 1% gain or loss, with breaks on either side representing a bullish or bearish return.

I used the Monday open following the Poll mailing (usually over the weekend) as the starting price, matched with the closing price 1-month later. Where the difference between 1-month open and closing price was less than 1% the reading was considered 'Neutral'.

For the test period October 1st to the end of February the S&P recorded 16 periods of losses, 2 neutral periods and only 4 periods when the market closed higher a month later. This was in sharp contrast to the April to August analysis which had 5 bearish, 5 neutral and 10 bullish periods, and the prior December to April analysis which had 4 bearish, 4 neutral and 12 bullish periods. Will this sharp change in market behavior have changed any of the blogger outlook's during this period?

I excluded Blogger who returned fewer than five polls, so this meant saying goodbye to In the Money, and Daily Blog Watch. Incidentally, both of these bloggers got their single call correct.

Of the remaining bloggers, four were steadfast in their opinions and returned one unwavering call throughout the polling period. These were Carl Futia (bullish), Learning Curve (bullish), Millionaire Now (neutral), and Random Roger (bearish). Carl and Roger have been consistent over the past year in been 100% bullish or bearish.

The most accurate blogger from October to March was Slope of Hope at 80% correct, closely followed by Random Roger at 70%. The majority of bloggers had 40% or fewer of their responses correct.

Sixteen bloggers returned polls across my three test periods. The law of averages kicked in so the spread was relatively low between the least accurate blogger (Millionaire Now) at 14% correct responses, and Daily Dose of Optimism the most at 46%. When variance is considered, Quant Investor does well with 42% accuracy on variance of 2.7%. My responses returned a 37% accuracy on 2.0% variance, with Peridot Capitalist and Information Arbitrage the most consistent with 0.2% and 0.6% variance respectively.



Did bloggers change their views over time?

The last chart assigns bearish (max -100) to bullish (+100) values according to the sum of their returns. For example, a blogger returning a bearish call every time will score -100. A blogger returning half bullish and half bearish calls will have a score of 0, and all bullish calls will score 100. Highlighted boxed represent a bullish (>50) or bearish (<50). Red or green text reflect a bullish or bearish change from the previous call. At the very bottom is the performance for the S&P during this period. It is clear in the most recent analysis that the S&P has switched strongly bearish (but had been in decline throughout 2007).


The biggest about turn came from Learning Curve who went from strongly bearish to strongly bullish (unfortunately, at the wrong time!). Others, like Daily Dose of Optimism stayed bullish throughout, but within the optimism was a gradual bearish drift. Quant Investor and I jumped sharply on to the bullish bandwagon after two periods of neutral outlook. Millionaire Now and HedgeFolios turned bullish, but did so from bearish levels to leave their current outlook as neutral. Both Information Arbitrage and Elliot Wave Lives On turned more bearish as early bullish outlooks dropped to neutral.

If you look at the period April to September 2007 there were an equal number of strong bulls and bears (prior to the sell off). Currently strong bulls outnumber strong bears by over three to one.

From the three test periods there are bloggers who are more consistently more accurate than others? High accuracy by Carl Futia and Daily Dose of Optimism is offset by the variance of their calls. Quant Investor leads the pack with a low variance and decent accuracy during a bull and bear market. Will it continue?

Dr. Declan Fallon, Senior Market Technician, Zignals.com the free stock alerts, market alerts, and stock charts website

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